John Winthrop

America's Forgotten Founding Father

Francis J. Bremer

The first full-length biography of a giant of early American history

John Winthrop

America's Forgotten Founding Father

Francis J. Bremer

Description

The preeminent figure of early New England, John Winthrop was the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. More than anyone else, he shaped the culture of New England and his effort to create a Puritan "City on a Hill" has had a lasting effect on American values. In John Winthrop, Francis J. Bremer draws on over a decade of research in England, Ireland, and the United States to offer a superb biography of Winthrop, one rooted in a detailed understanding of his first forty years in England. Indeed, Bremer provides an extensive, path-breaking treatment of Winthrop's family background, youthful development, and English career. His dissatisfaction with the decline of the "godly kingdom of the Stour Valley" in which he had been raised led him on his errand to rebuild such a society in a New England. In America, Winthrop would use the skills he had developed in England as he struggled with challenges from Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson, among others, and defended the colony from English interference. We also see the personal side of Winthrop—the doubts and concerns of the spiritual pilgrim, his everyday labors and pleasures, his feelings for family and friends. And Bremer also sheds much light on important historical moments in England and America, such as the Reformation and the rise of Puritanism, the rise of the middling class, the colonization movement, and colonial relations with Native Americans. Incorporating previously unexplored archival materials from both sides of the Atlantic, here is the definitive portrait of one of the giants of our history.

John Winthrop

America's Forgotten Founding Father

Francis J. Bremer

Author Information

John Winthrop

America's Forgotten Founding Father

Francis J. Bremer

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the John C. Pollock Award for Christian Biography for 2005 Winner of Honorable Mention, The Colonial Dames of America Book Award

"...this is a biography that has no equivalent for the early parts of his life and goes on to provide an exemplary narrative and analysis of his years in Massachusetts...a text that will have to be engaged with by all students of the first period of New England." - The Seventeenth Century, Volume 10, Issue 2